Committee Hearings – Week of 09-22-19

This week with both the House and Senate in session (but preparing for a 2-week break) there is a full slate of politically oriented hearings slated in the House and the Senate Appropriations Committee will try to address some additional spending bills. Two markup hearings this week (one on each side of the Capital) will look at bills covered in this blog.

Senate Spending Bills – Markups

The Senate Appropriations Committee will try to get four spending bills reported to the Senate this week:

• Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies (IER) – Subcommittee – Tuesday;

• Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) – Subcommittee – Tuesday;

• DHS – Subcommittee – Tuesday;

• IER, CJS, DHS, and Legislative Branch – Full Committee - Thursday

I suspect that the IER and CJS bills may be successfully reported, but the DHS bill (because of ‘the Wall’ and immigration) is at the heart of the controversy holding up Senate consideration of spending bills. I really do not expect the Committee to report a DHS spending bill.

Markup Hearings

On Wednesday the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a markup hearing on three bills:

• HR 1975, the Cybersecurity Advisory Committee Authorization Act of 2019

• HR 4432, the Protecting Critical Infrastructure Against Drones and Emerging Threats Act

• HR ____, the National Commission on Online Platforms and Homeland Security Act

HR 4432 has not yet been published, either by the GPO or the Committee and the final bill has not yet been introduced (expected today?).

With only three bills on the agenda, we may see some amendments offered and very briefly discussed, but none have yet been published on the hearing page.

On Wednesday the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a markup hearing covering 21 bills.

• S 2095, the Enhancing Grid Security through Public-Private Partnerships Act;

• S 2333, the Energy Cybersecurity Act of 2019; and

• HR 1420, the Energy Efficient Government Technology Act

On the Floor

As I mentioned yesterday, the House is scheduled to take up HR 3710, the Cybersecurity Vulnerability Remediation Act on Wednesday. It will likely pass with significant bipartisan support, but I will be surprised if it is taken up in the Senate this year.

There is a good chance that the Senate could take up HR 4378, the continuing resolution that was passed last week. That bill would extend the current funding rate for the federal government through November 21^st. It would be taken up under the unanimous consent process and I suspect that Sen. McConnel (R,KY) would want to try to do that as soon as possible. That would leave room for the House to come up with a ‘cleaner’ CR if there is an objection to the bill in the Senate. The Senator to watch will be Sen. Paul (R,KY).